Who Would Jesus Torture?

Law professor Paul Campos has a moving op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News this morning about the morality of torture. His conclusion? "Torture is wrong. It is always wrong, at all times, in all places."

Law professor Paul Campos has a moving op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News this morning about the morality of torture. His conclusion? "Torture is wrong. It is always wrong, at all times, in all places."

Campos frames his essay with a powerful reminder of the Passion drama we recite every year on Palm Sunday. When Pilate brings Jesus before the crowd and asks what is to be done with him, those assembled shout "Crucify him!"

"That is," Campos writes, "we the people implore the authorities to torture a man to death." Now, there are those who will protest that no one is looking to kill detainees, just to use extreme methods deemed necessary to extract information from them. But morality, Campos insists, "is only possible if there are certain things we must refuse to do under any circumstances."

He ends with a quote from Thomas Jefferson that we would do well to heed in these days when we are led by those who seem so confident that they know God's will: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

(I was alerted to this op-ed by the blog of Melissa Rogers, former executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Her invaluable blog on religion, politics, and law is one of the first stops on my daily blog reading and should be one of yours, too.)

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Faithful Democrats believes that Democrats are stronger when we speak from our values and Christianity is stronger when we embrace the full Gospel. Our goal is less to provide a response to the Religious Right than to express a Christian whole with humility, authenticity, and a belief that Jesus’ teachings are still relevant to our world and politics.